Tuesday, November 3, 2009

I found the pattern on Ravelry . We needed costumes for the front office for Halloween. This seemed the perfect thing to top off our orange shirts and jeans. It was written for kids sizes but no problem, I'd just use bigger needles. Right? I cast on for the XL. Just like the Great Pumpkin, it kept growing and growing and growing! Pretty soon it was obvious that I was not going to be able to finish 3 more hats by Halloween, not to mention that this hat was taking on gargantuan proportions.

When I finally bound off the last stitch, I tried it on my husband's head. With his hair in its current manifestation, it's bigger than most heads, but the hat slipped so far over his ears even his beard was dwarfed by it. He looked like a sultan in Aladdin. Not a look to which he aspired. Probably just as well because I was getting the vibe that he wasn't about to wear a pumpkin hat anyway.

I wasn't about to waste the knitting time however. I decided to pick up stitches from the brim of the hat with a circular needle and knit the durn thing closed. I continued in seed stitch until the pattern was suffering due to being decreased, then I went to stockingette stitch until I had about 9 stitches left. I cut the yarn, threaded the remaining stitches on the cut yarn and pulled the opening closed. Ta dah! A pumpkin bottom. I stuffed it and stitched it shut, stitched on the leaf and ta dah again! A fat pumpkin!